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February 21, 2009
The RAT Board
There was more to the atrocious "stimulus" package than hundreds of $billions of frivolous pork barrel spending that will leave generations of Americans in debt. It also advanced the liberal goals of putting the healthcare industry under direct federal control, and secretively repealing welfare reform so as to breed future generations of state-dependent Democrat voters. Better still for an administration that crawled out of the sewers of Chicago politics, it gives the White House tremendous leverage to squash corruption investigations. A furtive provision in the bill
creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it's known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.
In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask "that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation." If the inspector general doesn't want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he'll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.
When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors general, read the words "conduct or refrain from conducting," alarm bells went off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target.
Grassley was a member of the House-Senate conference committee. Yet he only learned of the RAT provision buried deep in the 1,073 pages of wasteful spending when he was tipped off by a worried inspector general. According to a Democrat Senator, RAT was "something the Obama administration wanted included in this bill."
When he learned about RAT, Grassley wanted to voice his objections before the Senate. But there was no time; they had to hurry up and vote so that Nazi Pelousy could jet off to Europe — and so that no one would have time to read the bill.
This is what the Moonbat Messiah calls "transparency." Here he is explaining how it will be a "touchstone" of his regime:
On tips from The MaryHunter and Reuben C.
Posted by Van Helsing at February 21, 2009 8:55 AM
Comments
According to a Democrat Senator, RAT was "something the Obama administration wanted included in this bill."
There could be no more appropriate acronmym.
Posted by: Mandible Claw at February 21, 2009 9:02 AM
How guys like Obama sleep at night, or look at themselves in the mirror in the morning if still beyond me.
AC
Posted by: AC at February 21, 2009 9:19 AM
The cycle will bring Republicans back into power someday. It will be entertainment to watch when the Republicans use all these wonderful tools that are going to be in place. There will be a Rove type or some other very clever Republican who will use these tools on the very people who created them. With any luck, the mainstream media will be a shadow of its present self which is a shadow of its previous self. So the Republicans will run wild for several years. Of course, the Republicans will get carried away and cause enough pain and suffering to the current fools that the cycle will come back again.
It is a thing both sides forget. In a duel, both sides have swords or pistols and the swords are sharp and the pistols are loaded. In political duels, there is no honor--only blood and ruined reputations/careers.
Obama could spend 15 years after his administration watching members of his administration and or himself going to hearings and trials to testify with purjury charges only a poorly remembered statement away. It is his choice.
Posted by: SnowSnake at February 21, 2009 9:58 AM
Wait....did he say The Constitution near the end? What could he possibly know about that?
Posted by: JMF at February 21, 2009 10:56 AM
I say Obama lied about this Bill, the purpose of the Bill, what the Bill is supposed to accomplish, and why it needed to be voted on without debate. Obama has conducted his presidential duties in bad faith violating all ethics. If that isn't a high crime I don't know what is. This man needs to be impeached. This man needs to be tossed out on his ear.
Posted by: Kevin R at February 21, 2009 1:27 PM
AC, there's a book about that very thing... It's called The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell. It's a VERY good read.
Posted by: Anonymous at February 21, 2009 5:04 PM
Posted by: Rob Banks at February 21, 2009 6:11 PM
Kevin R: it was so important it needed to be voted on without debate, but not important enough for obama to take time out of his 4 day weekend to sign it straight after the vote. As Rush asked, why did it have to wait 4 days without being signed? Why couldn't those 4 days have been used for debate? Are Pelosi and Obama's scheduling conflicts more important than 80 billion dollars-or is it something even more sinister?
Posted by: Mandible Claw at February 21, 2009 11:31 PM
Notice how the bobble head is looking left to right?
He's reading a teleprompter. This moron can't think of a single sentence on his own something that George Bush at least could do despite how many times the moonbats called him a moron.
Posted by: Moonbat skullcracker at February 22, 2009 12:29 AM
Notice how the bobble head is looking left to right?
He's reading a teleprompter. This moron can't think of a single sentence on his own something that George Bush at least could do despite how many times the moonbats called him a moron.
Posted by: Moonbat skullcracker at February 22, 2009 12:29 AM
I strongly suspect that Bush's clumsiness and tongue-tied-ness were a function of constantly being 'in his own head' as President -- second-guessing every single word he said and action he made before and during he did it, to see if it was right according to his own principles.
He is an extremely eloquent person on issues on which he is already resolved -- look at his speeches on 9/11 compared to speeches later as he was weighing the option of sending U.S. troops into hostile countries, for all the proof you will need.
Obama is also an eloquent person on issues in which he whole-heartedly believes -- look at the eloquence of his unscripted reply to Joe the Plumber as he advocate "spreading the wealth around" to "be fair."
Obama's eloquence fails him when he is forced to talk about issues that don't relate to socialism and race-based advocay.
Posted by: Mandible Claw at February 22, 2009 6:57 AM
I have never believed in science fiction...until now. I believe the USA has entered an alternative universe in which everything is backwards. "Transparency" means "sleight-of-hand"; "accountability" means "count the ways I am taking your money"; and "change you can believe in" means "you won't believe the ways I'll shortchange the American people."
Posted by: Ruddie at February 22, 2009 9:32 AM
Predictably, you're now undergoing qualitatively the same "revolution" as we began experiencing under Blair over a decade ago. Nobody quite knew what to expect then. Blair announced that there would be change, hopey change, indeed his last line of his first speech in front of Number 10 was "now let the work of change begin".
What "change" actually means to these corporate state progressives is the development of a bureaucratic infrastructure. Blair again said that he intended to make reforms that "could not be undone". So the thing to watch isn't specific policies- which may confusingly appear often to be "conservative" or not what you expect, e.g. clamping down on welfare claimants (or at least appearing to). What they do is to build new bureaucracies both inside and outside the government, lacing them together with each other and with that which was formerly considered private to create a structure which is dependent. Each part of the structure supports and is supported by the other parts. People become dependent on them, for regulation, and for money e.g. by grants and government spending.
You thus get a system that any subsequent government will find it very hard to dismantle piece by piece, since removal of any part will lead to general disfunction. Since electorates are unlikely to vote for radical restructurings, being generally moderates who are cautious of system shocks, the whole thing is effectively impossible to get rid of. Everyone is dependent on it. Millions of jobs rely on it, entire industries only exist because of it. Statists have always done this of course, but with the neoprogressive model, it's on steroids. And since it quietly is built in the background, the mass of the people are barely aware it's happening.
If you want rid of this after Obama's two terms in office, you're going to have to be prepared to do something pretty radical. Britain has utterly failed at that- our "conservatives" are now entirely subverted and seek only to take the reins of Leviathan. I hope you can be more radical than that, and some day save yourselves.
Posted by: Ian from the EUSSR at February 22, 2009 10:37 AM
comrade Obama has obviously confused transparency with stealth.
Posted by: James McEnanly at February 22, 2009 12:35 PM
